Snapedom

Part II: Ability - Voldemort and Dumbledore

With regard to the request Severus made of Voldemort:

 

The assumption that Severus had the ability here to save all three people in question is, upon a careful examination of the facts, simply insupportable. Let us recall the positions of everyone involved.

 

- Voldemort: ruthless megalomaniac willing to torture and kill anyone standing in his way, including his own followers. Determined to kill the child of prophecy.

- Dumbledore: powerful wizard standing in direct, outspoken opposition to Voldemort, though he is apparently willing to lie to and manipulate anyone, including his own followers, if he thinks it is for the greater good.

- Severus: Voldemort's (at least nominal) follower though he does not trust Voldemort to actually grant him what he asks.

- Lily and James: Dumbledore's followers who were thus Voldemort's declared enemies and who had personally at this point in time openly defied him at least three times (either singly or together, this is unclear).

- Harry: their infant son, the subject of the prophecy as interpreted by Voldemort and thus his direct target.

 

Now, I think it ought to be obvious (but apparently it isn't) that there was nothing Severus could do in this instance to save Harry (and thus nothing he could do to condemn him). He knew that Voldemort believed the boy to be the one prophesied to vanquish him, a future but direct threat that Voldemort intended to do away with before he could become an immediate threat. Asking for the child's life would have been pointless. Voldemort, we are told IIRC, normally did not randomly kill children, so it is a measure of how serious he deemed the threat Harry supposedly posed to him that he was determined to kill him outright. What on earth could a young, talented but poor and otherwise ordinary follower have offered him to convince him to spare the boy? Nothing. Simply asking would in all likelihood have earned Severus an Avada Kedavra, or at the very least a few rounds of Cruciatus and a heap of suspicion for his pains, and would not have resulted in Harry's life being spared in any case. (Perhaps Severus could have gone to the Potters, stood in their doorway, and tried to fight against Voldemort, but he had no hope of defeating him and would simply have been AK'd in any case, thus contributing nothing materially towards the Potters' defense at all.)

 

This is where I think Dumbledore's argument is disingenuous, and in fact specious. "Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?” he asks - ignoring the fact that Severus was never in any position to make such an exchange. He never had Harry's life (or James' for that matter) in a way that he could offer it to Voldemort "in exchange" for Lily's. We are not talking about hostages here, or Severus possessing information that would lead Voldemort to a child otherwise hidden/protected from him, or anything like that. They are all at risk, and the choice Severus has is merely to ask or not ask for their lives, singly or together. The possibilities (that Severus could calculate) were:

 

- Severus does nothing, all three die

- Severus asks Voldemort to spare Lily; assuming Voldemort complies, she lives and Harry and James die

- Severus asks for James' life, Lily and Harry die

- Severus asks for James and Lily's lives, Harry dies

- Severus asks for Harry's life, with or without the lives of one/both of the parents, Severus (likely) dies or is tortured and probably comes under suspicion of wavering faith, Harry and probably both his parents die

- Severus asks for Lily and/or James' lives, Voldemort does not comply, all three die, Severus possibly dies or is possibly tortured, probably comes under suspicion

- Severus asks for both Lily and James' lives, Voldemort partially complies, Harry and one of his parents (Voldemort's choice) die

 

Really, Dumbledore's argument here that Severus traded Harry for Lily is so fundamentally unsound that it comes across as slightly out of characer to me (even for manipulative!Dumbledore). It honestly reads to me like authorial insertion, JKR attempting to paint Severus in the blackest of colors without regard to logic or the actual established facts of her world, more than anything else. The fact that Severus stammeringly replies to Dumbledore's argument with the vague "I have - I have asked him -" rather than an attempt to point out that he in fact could not offer such an exchange merely speaks to me of the depths of his distress here, compounded by the guilt he is likely feeling for reporting the half-prophecy at all. So the argument that Severus chose to sacrifice the life of an infant in return for Lily's when he made his request of Voldemort simply doesn't hold up. Harry was going to die no matter what he did, and he could not have chosen to sacrifice someone he never had a possibility of protecting in the first place. Nothing he could have said would have impacted Harry's fate (so far as he knew) one way or the other.

 

Did Severus have the option, when he spoke with Voldemort, to spare James' life? This is a slightly murkier issue. We know that he assumed (knew?) that Voldemort meant to kill "them all," meaning not just Harry but James and Lily as well. We know that James and Lily had set themselves in direct opposition to Voldemort and had previously defied him thrice, thus in all likelihood earning them spots on his general hit list, and we know that Severus knew this (since he understood why Voldemort thought the prophecy referred to their child in particular). He obviously thought that he had some chance of sparing at least one of the two adults, since he dared ask for Lily's life; but he also did not ultimately trust Voldemort enough to actually spare either of them (else he would not have approached Dumbledore). We don't know if James and Lily had each defied Voldemort thrice, or only as a couple (that is, we do not know if one of them was considered a greater threat than the other by Voldemort, or if they were seen as equally troublesome). Lacking clearer indicators, it's probably best to assume that James and Lily were roughly of equal importance to Voldemort as enemies of his. If we take interviews as canon, however, one of the three defiances was Lily's refusal to join the Death Eaters - given no corresponding defiance by James alone, this probably slightly tilts the balance against any possibility that she was of less importance to Voldemort and thus safer to ask for/more likely to be spared.

 

Taking factors other than personal defiance into account: James is the only scion of a noble, wealthy old pureblood family, and a blood traitor, in the eyes of Voldemort's henchmen - though until recently a Potter was apparently considered a perfectly acceptable match for Dorea Black. We know James' father was in Gryffindor, and so unlikely to be of similar opinions as the DEs (though it's not utterly impossible); we know nothing about his mother. Lily was a (seemingly lower middle-class) Muggleborn, and a very powerful and talented witch apparently considered worthy of joining Voldemort's ranks despite her blood status. I think it slightly more probable that Voldemort would be willing to consider sparing a powerful and talented Muggleborn witch (whose wellbeing, by the way, would provide a very handy leash for an equally powerful and talented follower of his own) he had already tried to recruit than a wealthy (read: resource-providing) blood traitor who had, to all indications, thoroughly and ostentatiously distanced himself from any pureblood-supremacist factions and who even as a student was an outspoken opponent of the Dark Arts (whatever they may be), Voldemort's, ah, special hobby. This tilts the balance back towards equilibrium, I think.

 

So, all things considered, if he were to ask for only one of the adults, Severus might have had roughly equal chances of saving James as he would have of saving Lily. Possibly he had greater chances asking for Lily anyway, depending on how much weight Voldemort gave the 'leash' possibility and how much Severus spun his request as an attempt to revenge himself on Lily herself (as terri_testing has him do in one of her fics), and/or on James through Lily. However, I think it is quite clear that he was not going to not ask for Lily in any case, considering the fact that it was danger to her specifically that motivated him to risk his life and approach Voldemort at all. So what were his chances of having both of them spared?

 

I rather doubt that they were as high as all that, given what we know about Voldemort and his targets. One life (perhaps especially Lily's?): possible. Voldemort can always kill her later (Voldemort would tell himself), and there are possibilites for manipulation of Severus, for Imperiusing or converting the woman, etc. Both: doubtful. They are already his declared enemies, and are bound to be further radicalized by the murder of their only child. Even if they do not pose the sort of direct threat to him that the child does, they are a threat to his followers, an annoyance, part of the little army his major opponent has put together against him, etc. Plus there's no telling if the child is a one-off, or if there is some special power this particular couple holds that allows them to produce supremely powerful children capable of defeating him; best not to take the risk, strategically speaking. I just really, really don't see Voldemort agreeing to spare both of them, no matter how hard Severus begs. And Severus is neither unobservant nor an imbecile; he probably suspects that his chances of success decrease in inverse proportion to how many lives he requests, generally speaking. Voldemort is not known for his generosity and compassion towards enemies, after all (nor towards followers who step out of line). So, given that Severus was going to ask for Lily's life in any case if he was going to ask at all, it is rather doubtful that he could have successfully asked for James' life as well. It's (just about) possible that he could have saved him, but unlikely, and he probably knew it (leaving aside his feelings about James for the moment).

 

Thus, his chances of saving anyone in this particular situation:

 

- Harry: nil

- James alone: possible, but not an option Severus would have considered (and one that raises the same moral issues that saving Lily alone does, given that all three are at risk)

- Lily alone: possible (quite possibly his best shot from a purely strategic perspective, though of course Severus was not working from such a POV)

- James and Lily: perhaps possible, but unlikely; an option we might expect/hope Severus to consider, morally speaking, but one he is not likely to have actually thought about when he spoke to Voldemort

 

So in asking Voldemort only for Lily's life, Severus at most accepted the fact that the child was going to die no matter what he did and failed to ask for the life of a man he might have been able to save, but did not have much reason to expect would be spared as well. Not noble, but hardly the callous choice to sacrifice two people he could have just as easily saved in favor of the third. Nor the callous "exchange" of an infant for his mother that Dumbledore implies Severus to have made, James aside. Given the risk to himself of asking for even one of their lives from Voldemort, Severus did better than I suspect many people would have, instead of taking the easy way out by just keeping his mouth shut and giving it up as a lost cause. I am not sure what I myself would do in his situation, though of course I want to think I would have the courage to request for one or both to be spared (of course, I would also hope I'd never have chosen to divulge the prophecy in the first place, but again, I don't know. We don't know precisely why Severus himself reported it, after all!)